In 1978 Andre Brink published an essay entitled "Slaves and Masters" in the Argus, later included in his collection Mapmakers: Writing in a State of Siege (1983: 154-162). In it he discusses the period between the abolition of the oceanic slave trade in 1807 (effective in the Cape from 1808) and the abolition of slavery in 1838, and gives special attention to the Galant revolt of 1825 which involved a group of slaves and their masters, as well as a few white dependants and visitors on the remote Cape farm, Houd-den-bek. This was the period of "amelioration" of the conditions of slavery, and Brink argues that Cape Dutch resentment of British interventions in the relationships between slave owners and slaves retarded abolition. Cape Dutch farmers were angry at the ameliorative legislation which tried to limit their control over their slaves and to lessen the severity of the punishments which they were entitled to inflict. Wayne Dooling (2007: 84) explains that the Cape Dutch believed that their prosperity, and perhaps their survival, depended on slave labour. He gives a full account of the opposition to "amelioration" leading up to the Galant revolt (pp. 84-91). He quotes Clarkson, who explains that this policy was intended gradually to allow slaves to rise to "the rank of a free peasantry" (p. 84). Brink claims that "without these measures ... slavery at the Cape might have been abolished long before [1838]" (Brink 1983: 158).
